Electricians typically require a variety of information about outlets before performing work on them, such as replacing an outlet, adding a new outlet to a circuit, and other electrical work. An electrician might use a variety of tools to acquire the necessary information. This information may include the circuit number that an outlet is on, and possibly the outlet number and other information such as voltage, amperage, polarity, and the like. The electrician might also like to collect information such as the amount of power consumed over a period of time, voltage peaks, and other relevant electrical information about the outlet and/or the circuit.
Circuits are currently mapped using one of two methods. The first method is to flip the switches on a circuit breaker while a second person waits in a room where an outlet (or switch) is located with a light or other load on the outlet. The second person yells when the light or other load goes out due to loss of power, indicating that the switch just flipped is for the circuit that the outlet is on. The second person then moves the light or other load to another outlet, and the process is repeated. This approach requires no technology, but it is very time consuming. In older houses or other buildings, all of the outlets in a room may not be on the same circuit, since electricians or homeowners adding additional service might just tap the nearest wire rather than trying to tap the circuit that corresponds to the other outlets in the same room. Moreover, this approach requires two people to be practical. Also, this method does not provide information about voltage, amperage, polarity, power consumption, voltage peaks or any other characteristic that might be relevant.
A second method that is currently used for mapping electrical circuits comprises a commercially available device used to map one outlet at a time. This method comprises using a device that sends a signal over the electrical wiring from an outlet to the circuit breaker. The electrician then moves a detector over the circuit breakers in a circuit box until it picks up the signal as it passes over the correct circuit breaker. The device typically lights up or emits a tone to indicate that the signal is picked up and that the current circuit breaker corresponds to the circuit for the outlet being tested. While this second approach can detect a circuit for one outlet, it is not practical for multiple outlets on multiple circuits. This is because the detectors do not differentiate between the signals sent from two different signal modules. Thus, if an electrician was to plug in multiple modules, and they were on different circuits, there would be no way to differentiate between the modules/outlets.
A method for collecting information about different outlets and consolidating the information into a hand-held computer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,057,401. This approach allows a technician to collect signals from multiple modules in parallel, but this approach is cumbersome, requiring that the outlets and circuit box be connected by an additional wire (“umbilical cord”) that needs to be carried around the worksite. Moreover, this approach is expensive, due to the computer and the umbilical cord.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,029 provides a method for detecting the correct circuit interrupt device for a particular circuit by applying a signal generator at an outlet and sweeping a signal detector over circuit interrupt devices. This method only allows for one to one correlation of an outlet and a fuse or circuit breaker. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,206 provides a method and apparatus for determining a group to which a connection point forming part of an electrical installation belongs by installing a detector in place of a fuse and generating a signal at a connection point. This method is limited by the scalability of the number of connections that can be made simultaneously to the fuse box.
A method for determining which outlet is closer to a circuit breaker is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,352,985. In this method a device measures a voltage drop over a wiring loop between neutral and earth contact terminals. This approach, however, only tells the electrician about the relative proximity to the circuit breaker after he knows that they are on the same circuit.
In addition to circuit detection, there are devices that can collect other types of information such as voltage, polarity, etc., but they are typically specialized so that multiple tools and some manual steps are required to completely map out the outlets and their characteristics and to relate them to circuits in the breaker box.
Currently, keeping track of outlets to circuit relationships on a large scale requires significant manual work. Relating the circuit identification for each outlet to the map requires manual work. Relating circuit identifications to the circuit box requires manual work. Also, each time a measurement is taken to provide information like voltage, etc; manual work is required to relate the information to the outlets on a map. Moreover, current mapping methods do not relate a circuit box representation and a floor plan to provide a comprehensive circuit map.